Experiential Learning and Innovative Pedagogy
Globally-facing, community-oriented, applied and experiential learning are core parts of my pedagogical toolkit. I teach courses in global politics, global political economy, trade law, and international negotiation. Both within and beyond the classroom, my students engage in original research, leadership, and change-making advocacy. At times, they are encouraged to take a conventional, top-down view to examine how international institutions have been designed, decisions negotiated, and policies delivered and enacted. In this sense, we focus on the “global governors” and our vantage point is from global cities such as Geneva, Beijing, Paris, and Washington, D.C. At other times, we take more heterodox approaches and turn our gaze from the “global governors” to the “globally governed” to better understand how everyday people - from the Ankasa Rainforest in Ghana to Norfolk County in Ontario - experience global politics and exercise agency, power, and resistance on a daily basis.
Current experiential learning opportunities:
Global Political Economy of Commodities
Ghana Field School, in which students conduct original field research while undertaking a 1000-km road trip across Ghana. Students trace cocoa through global supply chains while exploring a range of related issues including sustainable development, gender, race, trade, human rights, and labour. This course is made possible by our formally negotiated partnership agreement with the University of Ghana, Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy.
Global Governance from an African Perspective
Students travel to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to conduct original field research and produce major research papers on a range of topics including sustainable development, security, gender, climate change, trade, finance, poverty reduction, food and hunger. Students meet with officials and representatives working in various international organizations including the African Union, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, various non-governmental organizations, and national embassies located in Ethiopia.